


Also A We

by Sagnessagiel



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: AU, Alcohol Mentions, F/M, Sense8 AU, Telepathy, The batkids are a cluster, Trauma, Violence, that's about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-06 22:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5432630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sagnessagiel/pseuds/Sagnessagiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being in a cluster means never being alone. It means unity. It means cooperation. It means finding each other’s light in the darkest of times. It means safety.</p><p>Short pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Huntress is in the middle of a bust, and Barbara watches with relaxed amusement. Helena has it under control, despite Barbara’s earlier insistence that she be allowed to call in some reinforcements. Red Robin and Batgirl should be somewhere in the area anyway, and she knows that they wouldn’t find it an annoyance. Still, Helena insists on working alone for now. 

Barbara doesn’t push, but she can’t say she understands. Why would anyone ever want to be alone?

Helena handcuffs some people on the screen, and Barbara feels familiar hands scratching at her shoulders. She groans and relaxes into the touch. Just out of habit, she glances at her feed. No breaches in any of her sectors.

“Long night?” Dick breathes in her ear, and she shakes her head softly. 

“Helena’s easy to work with. Really likes the solitary way of things.” Dick huffs childishly, and she’s imagining how it ruffles her hair. 

“Boring. Doesn’t she know that vigilantes are always found in packs?”

“More like schools of fish,” Barbara says, grins when Dick pinches her. His arms circle her shoulders and she closes her eyes. She lets the touch linger for a moment, just reveling in it. 

Dick nudges at her in a way that has nothing to do with the physical, and she grasps at him eagerly. When she opens her eyes, she has a higher perspective and a blissful feeling of control. Dick reaches up to rub at her arms, which now squeeze his shoulders. 

“You should get out more,” Dick says thoughtfully, and she knows what he really means. 

“This is where I am,” she replies. “I’m happy here.”

“I know you miss it, Babs,” Dick says sadly. He squeezes her arms. 

“Give me some time, Dick. I’ll get there eventually.”

Dick doesn’t push more than that. They both startle and Barbara finds herself thrown by the sensation of falling when Helena speaks on screen. 

“O, you copy? I need some uniforms to come pick up a delivery.”

Barbara breathes. She grips the handles of her chair for a moment. Then she relaxes.

“Making the call now,” she says and types up the commands to send the coordinates to the GCPD. Helena smiles at the camera.

“What’s next then?”

Barbara toggles between feeds on her handheld. “There’s a clown stop over at East End, but Red and BG should be on it.”

Helena blinks. “A what now?”

Barbara looks up at the screen, confused. “What? Oh. I mean, uh, a robbery. I’m looking for the next assignment right now.”

She goes back to typing and very pointedly ignores the faint laughter fading behind her. She shakes her head, fighting amusement. 

Dick doesn’t tell her to call if she needs him. That he’s doing casework and staying in the apartment. She knows.


	2. Chapter 2

Cassandra sits by a table on a busy street and looks out over the traffic. There’s a cold cup of coffee in her hands. She looks at the people passing, and wonders how they can be so alone and so okay with it. She doesn’t like it at all. 

She’s been away for a month now, and it still feels like her skin is made of raw nerves. Like she’s isolated even when she knows that she could call and they would all come running. Her cluster would do anything for her to feel at home, but she doesn’t know that she ever will here. She needs them. Needs real human contact. 

They talked about it, all seven of them, once. Together in an apartment with a six pack that only Jason drank but they all felt it. She knows that they can’t tell the difference like she can. That they could stroke the air and feel each other’s touch, while she is hopelessly connected to the physical in a way that they will never be. 

This is the reason she does not nudge. Why she doesn’t like visiting them without being the one in the body. She needs the physical, needs to be grounded. It’s the only way she knows she can be real, can speak to others. Words aren’t real in the way that touch is, and she can’t deal with being confined to them. Words don’t hold up when she needs to help. When she needs help.

She puts the coffee cup on the table and stands up to leave. It’s no problem for her to blend into the crowd. Her apartment is only a few blocks from here, so she walks. Wonders what she should say to them when they come asking later what the sadness is about. She can already picture their concerned faces. How she’ll be able to touch them and have her hand stop in midair, but it won’t be real. 

She’s absorbed in her own thoughts when someone bumps into her hard, making her stumble. Her legs steady on instinct and her hands latch onto the shoulders of a little boy. He stares up at her with frightened eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he says in French. “I didn’t see you.”

Cass shakes her head. “It is no trouble. Just be careful.”

The boy nods his head vigorously, and she notices then that there’s a helmet on his head. He is also wearing kneepads and elbow guards, and clutched in his hands is a sleek black skateboard, a little worn for healthy wear. 

Cass brushes him off a little and stares, unable to take her eyes off the board in his hands. The boy nods his thanks and readies himself to run off, but she doesn’t let go. He looks up at her in confusion. 

“Where did you get that?” she asks, unsure of why she does it. 

“My mother gave it to me for my birthday. There is a store up the street.” The boy tugs a little at her, and she lets him run off. She blinks. Something in her core twinges. 

She walks up the street. 

The store is small, but the window is filled to the brim with differently modeled skateboards and kickbikes. She opens the door and a little bell rings, summoning a young woman with a messy ponytail and a kind smile to the counter. Cass goes on autopilot, and it feels odd without anyone in the cluster there. 

She selects a black board with a picture of a wizard on the back of it. She thinks she knows why she finds it so funny. 

Outside the store, she ignores the odd looks in favour of putting the skateboard on the ground and putting a cautious foot on it. It feels familiar, like the comforting safety of securing a line to a building and swinging into the sky. She kicks off, and the skateboard rolls like it would on smooth linoleum. Muscle memory causes her to adjust her balance as she gains momentum. 

Her stomach in knots with excitement and adrenaline, she skates all the way back to her apartment, and then continues down the street from there, turning a corner as though she has been doing it all her life. She feels warm and happy in a way that she knows has to do with more than only herself. She trusts her body. She feels safe.

She feels a lot less alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Batgirl is on a roll tonight.

Stephanie descends on a street robbery like the Batman himself, foot first and balance centred so that she lands steady next to the downed robber. She wastes no time in grabbing the gun of a second one and plans out her attack for the third in her head while she uses it to give him a concussion. The third takes off running - Stephanie can hear the wet splashes of his boots over the rain - and she rearranges the plan accordingly.

The man being robbed stands perfectly still with his hands still in the air, but he looks relieved. Stephanie flashes him a quick smile to reassure him and then brings her heel down hard on the already felled criminal. He screams and splashes up water with his flailing. His gun falls useless into a puddle and disappears under the dark surface of it. Stephanie turns on her heel and dashes after the final crook.

He’s a fast runner, to the point where he almost makes it out of the alley before Stephanie catches up to him. Her grapple gives a nice boost into the air and she swings ahead to land in front of him and cut him off. Rain sticks to her hair and drips in her eyes, but it doesn’t stagger her much. It does make him a lot more likely to slip though, which plays to her advantage.

He stops abruptly and slides a foot or so in the mud, hands fumbling in his jacket for something. Stephanie strikes a pose at the opening of the alley, and revels in the fear she sees on his face.

“Give it up, friend. You’ve got no chance of escape here."

Defiance sparks in his eyes. His hand emerges from his pocket and he aims a sleek handgun at her chest, making it very clear that he’s standing far too close for that to work. Stephanie takes only a split second to roll her eyes before she brings up a leg to kick it out of his grip. A swift kick and a right hook have him staggering to the ground, and then Stephanie looms over him. 

It might be that she’s doing so well tonight, might be the rain still running down her face, but she doesn’t see his arm before it sweeps her other leg. She stumbles and he takes the opportunity to roll back to his feet, taking off in a swift run once more. Stephanie swears and rights her balance.

The guy takes off down the empty street, Stephanie watching him as he goes. She’s aware of the location of his fallen gun, because she has the habit to keep track of any nearby firearms ingrained in her from years of training. She doesn’t think when she makes her next move, instead going completely on instinct. 

The gun is close enough for her to sweep it up with her leg, and she kicks it gracefully into the air to land in her hand. She grips it in both hands and aims it at the retreating form before she has the chance to think it through. Muscle memory makes it an easy maneuver. Then she realises what is happening.

Eyes widening in horror, she yelps as she drops the gun like it’s a hot piece of iron. It clatters to the ground again and she gathers herself quickly, going into business mode and running after him again. Her horror at the action she just did gets filed away to be dealt with later. Her long legs let her catch up despite his considerable head start, and she fells him with a set of bolas and aims an extra spiteful kick at his tied together shins. He screams and she doesn’t blame him. Steel toed boots will do that. 

Stephanie stands over him for a moment, breathing heavily and processing what just happened for a horrible moment. Her hindsight is doing nothing to help her because she can examine the moment she grabbed the gun, but she finds no emotion in it other than a cold sense of efficiency. The echo of it makes her shiver.

She drags him back to the alley to tie him to the others and make a neat little package for the GCPD to pick up. Blood rushes in her ears the whole time. It doesn’t stop until she’s alone on a rooftop in a lotus position trying to calm her rapid heart.

In her panicked thought spiral of trying to make sense of it, she finally manages to place why she feels so shaken. She recognises finally the tang of someone else’s emotions in her memory. Meditating on it a bit more, she visualises the cluster and gets a read on them all.

Their presence in her mind calms her down, helps her to focus. Barbara is at home, Dick in his apartment. Tim is sitting with Cassie in Paris and chattering about something while she cradles a skateboard in her lap. Nudging Damian gives her a vague sense of what she can only describe as the colour black. She chuckles weakly at his drama.

But Jason. Jason isn’t having a great night. She winces at the feeling of sharp pains crawling over her skin. She nudges at him again and receives a bone deep ache that makes her clench her teeth. Her body pulses with aching _hurt,_ for more reasons than she can even pinpoint.

She opens her eyes and wipes at them with a dirty glove, even as the tears are indistinguishable from the raindrops on her face. Her skin still tingles in a way that reminds her too closely of a dark apartment at midnight and the bitter tang of alcohol on her tongue. Her own efforts to forget. Stephanie recognises the damage in Jason. Resonates with it. Really wishes she didn’t.

It takes her only a moment to make a decision. She stands up and takes her grapple from her belt. A quick look around orients her again and she sets off in a direction she knows will take her to downtown Gotham. To a dark apartment she can still see flickering at the edges of her vision. An empty bottle in his-her limp hand.

If one of them has a bad night, the others flock to that person. Dick’s fondly named Rule #2 of the cluster. Stephanie decided long ago that she likes that rule.


	4. Chapter 4

Damian is working alone tonight. Too bad his cluster will never let it remain that way.

Before they were awakened, Damian really enjoyed his alone time. He liked working alone and dealing with his own problems. Nowadays he gathers what time he can get whenever one of the others finds something shiny. As much as Damian appreciates his clusters professional abilities, they do find far too many useless things utterly _fascinating._

Still, Damian can appreciate the luck of it when it’s not there anymore. He kicks a criminal in the teeth and aims another one at a nearby face before noticing that it is in fact Jason. His foot stops in mid-air with surprising finesse, and he segues it into a punch at a face he knows he doesn’t recognise. Jason snickers in his head.

“Easy, buddy. Tense much?” 

Damian spares him a glare for a moment and goes to attack the next person, who turns out to be Dick. He holds up his hands in surrender, showing off a chocolate bar and a remote control. He’s probably at home.

“Do you really need to be here?” Damian asks, and a crook stops with a tire iron mid-air to look at him as if he’s suddenly grown another head. Dick shrugs and takes a bite of the chocolate.

“Guess we can’t let go of work,” he replies. Damian swings at Tire Iron and dodges an appearance from Dick, who has apparently decided to move a little closer. Damian sighs internally, because Batman does not sigh out loud.

“If you find it so hard to let go you should be out patrolling.” He swings again, and Tire Iron goes down in a confused heap. The next one seems a bit more put together, since he doesn’t hesitate to charge at Damian.

“It’s a mental thing, little D. Not a physical one. I’m actually exhausted, but I still kind of want in on the action.” Dick smiles at him. He looks wildly out of place in blue pyjamas and sitting on a dumpster in a dark Gotham alley.

Damian looks at Jason who shrugs. “There’s nothing on TV.”

Cass nudges at them, a tinge of sadness in their chests, and they all send her reassuring thoughts as easy as breathing. Warmth floods Damian’s core. He takes on the next guy.

“ _Watch out!_ ” someone screams in their heads, and suddenly Stephanie instead of Damian spins around and kicks a man in the face. Damian stands behind her, now out of costume and with a frown he would never allow on Batman’s face. He crosses his arms and Steph stops to grin sheepishly at him.

“You weren’t paying attention.”

“I was distracted,” Damian replies, sending an irritable look to the two men behind her. They grin unrepentantly.

Damian takes back his body and Stephanie lets him have it. She settles on the dumpster next to Dick. They watch as Damian continues to fight.

“You’re a bit high with those kicks,” Dick remarks helpfully after a few more blows. Damian ignores him.

“Easy on the punches,” Stephanie remarks after him. “You’re not excused from helping me move my couch tomorrow if you break something.”

Damian looks at her.

“Did you think I was going to do that anyway?”

“You promised you would.” She smiles and digs into some yoghurt which she must have kept on hand.

“I did?”

“You did,” Dick agrees. “We were there.”

Jason nods.

Damian thinks hard and realises that yes, he probably did say something to that effect. He remembers trying to think of a way to quiet down the chattering in the cave. That was probably what they were arguing about when he interrupted them.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time for that." 

Stephanie glares at him, and the criminal he has in a headlock is now not fighting back. Instead he stares at the Batman as though he’s sprouted another head. 

“Uh, Bats?"

Damian shushes him.

“Not you. Surely those two should be just fine.”

Dick and Jason look betrayed. Stephanie waves dismissively at them, eyes on Damian.  
“They’re both busy. You’re the only one who has any time to spare.”

“I do not.” He’s aiming for indignant, but it comes out somewhat childish. The criminal taps him on the arm hesitantly.

“Batman? You alright?" 

“Will you be quiet? I can’t hear myself think.”

The man shrugs. “Okay then.”

Damian looks back at the three non-present people. Stephanie is looking imploringly at him, but the other two seem to have noticed how odd this looks. Dick is looking at the flabbergasted man in Damian’s grip, his expression bright with barely concealed amusement. Jason is grinning outright. 

“Where is that idiot boyfriend of yours then?”

“He’s in Paris with Cass. Going to hang around for the better part of tomorrow,” Stephanie replies. The peanut gallery next to her hum in agreement.

“And you can’t do this at a later time?”

“Uh-uh,” she counters, digging in the yoghurt. “I’m heading for Rhealasia tomorrow and Tim needs to vacuum when he gets back. He’s going to Europe for a mission the day after.”

“So why can’t he just move it tomorrow?” 

“Alone?”

“I’m busy tomorrow,” Jason chimes in.

“No one asked you,” Damian replies.

“Dude,” the man in his grip suddenly pipes up. “I get that I’m not going to get anymore information about whatever…” he gestures vaguely, “this is, but I have had a very long night, and my wife’s waiting for me at home. Either let go or knock me out.” 

Damian looks at him, then at the peanut gallery. He slowly lets go, and the man takes off running. Damian watches him go. 

“Can we figure this out at a later time?” he asks, exasperated. Stephanie crosses her arms. 

“Fine. Finish patrol and meet me at my apartment tomorrow.” She blinks and flickers out of sight.

“You know it’s a trap, right?” Jason asks. Damian sighs.

“When is it ever not?”  
Dick hums in amusement and takes a bite of his chocolate.


	5. Chapter 5

When Tim wakes up, Jason is sitting at his table, eating a bowl of cereal that he doesn’t even like and screaming internally because it _does_ kind of taste like a rainbow in his mouth.

Tim groans and twists in the bed, then pulls himself into a sitting position. His hair is a mess and he’s not wearing a shirt. His scars are visible in Jason’s periphery, including the fresh gash that runs down his side from a mission they all felt last night. Jason is still sore, and a little ticked because of it. Still, it’s not his place to judge, considering he’s the primary delivery boy of injuries to the cluster.

“Mornin’ Sunshine,” he says, making Tim jump. “How’s the bed?”

Tim squints at him, takes in his Wonder Woman pajama pants and unhealthy breakfast. Then he takes in the mess the apartment is from when he stumbled in last night shedding clothing as he went and patching himself up just enough not to bleed to death during the night.

“Softer than anything I’ve ever slept in, which makes it difficult to sleep in. Are you here?”

Jason looks at him then, a little worried for the ache he can feel in his own side. “You can’t tell?”

“I’m still half asleep, Jason. Help me out here.”  
Covering up. Not a good sign. “Yeah, I am, champ. Didn’t feel like spending the night at the apartment, so I crashed here. You mind?”

“Long as it’s not _my_ body you’re putting that crap in.” Tim shifts on the bed for a moment and then stills, sighing softly. Jason growls a low note.

“I hate Dick. I hate him.”

“Pretty sure he can tell with how you’re radiating it. There any new missions?”

“No, but there’s some cake in the fridge left from the birthday party if you want to join me in being unhealthy.”  
“You’re going to summon the mother hen army here if you keep that up. Could you give me my phone on the dresser?”

Jason look up at him. “Why don’t you get it yourself?” 

Tim looks at him for a few moments, discontent growing. Jason looks him up and down, realises that he has yet to actually move from the spot he woke up in. Realisation dawns on him.

“Is it Babs?”

Tim looks uncomfortable, and Jason wonders why he didn’t notice earlier. Tim always gets up right away, injury or no.

“It’ll pass if I stay still for a while. No big deal.” Tim tugs the blankets around himself protectively.

“You can’t pull that with someone who knows what it’s like. Just sit back for a bit. I’ll go get you some cake. Then we can see if we can’t massage some feeling back into you.” Jason gets up and starts to walk to the kitchen, taking the bowl with him. Tim sighs.

“Thanks Jason.”

Jason nudges at Barbara, and gets nothing but the feeling of being utterly _empty._ He staggers a little bit, but remains upright. 

“No problem. We should call her after that. See if we can’t cheer her up some.”

The sadness on Tim’s face is not his own. it belongs to them all.  
“Sounds like a plan.”


End file.
